Five years old X3M Ideas ventures out into South Africa for what it calls the South Central Africa project as it recently unveiled X3M Ideas SA (PTY) Limited in Johannesburg, South Africa. It’s our inroad to other parts of the continent in a mission to consolidate the African Advertising business, Steve Babaeko, Group CEO told the media in an interview at the Group’s Corporate head office in Lagos, Nigeria. Excerpts

Congratulations on this achievement, what is the driving force for launching South Africa project?

I don’t want to call it the South Africa project, I like to call it the South /Central Africa project. The project covers five territories in South Central Africa. South Africa being the arrow head where the operation is going to be spanning out to Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. So it’s a South Central Africa project.

The vision is quite clear, I have always felt that there are so many people on this continent for us to have a situation that we have currently where we are not doing business with each other. There are about 1 billion or some people say over 1.3 billon people on the Africa continent. If we make it easier for us to do business with each other, we don’t even need too many people outside. Because if we look at the other regions, such as America, South East Asia or Asia, North-East Asia or Europe, the level of intra-continental trading is higher than you find in Africa.

There are about 1 billion or some people say over 1.3 billon people on the Africa continent. If we make it easier for us to do business with each other, we don’t even need too many people outside.

Sometimes it’s even more expensive to travel from one Africa countries to other than travel to Europe. So those are the kind of stuff that has informed my ambition to say if we can bridge the gap in the inter-trade going on in this continent maybe we can go somewhere.

Nigeria and South Africa are the biggest economies on this continent, if we get it right with the two economies, we actually can change the story of the continent for good. Those are the part of the reasons propelling us to do what we are doing now.

Steve Babaeko, Group CEO, X3M Ideas

How easy was it, setting up business out there?

Of course it’s difficult, just like South Africa, they have their rules, and you have to play by the rules. It’s a pretty good place to do business. They are very welcoming of people, who have genuine interest to do business, but the rules are the rules, you have to play by the rules, they have their tax rules, have their registration rules, so abide by these rules and you are welcome to do business. We have been working on this for over a year; we just want to formally announce that we are there and see how much we can get going.

South Africa is a volatile environment, xenophobia is an issue out there, do you see any hitch in the future?

Like I explained, it’s South Centre Africa agenda, we are only starting in South Africa, we are not going to stop in South Africa. Let’s not forget, some of the client we work for, already have footprints in some of these markets. I was in Lusaka two weeks ago, on some billboards were Dangote cement creative materials, those were stuffs we developed in this shop, Access Bank is already in Lusaka in Gambia.

One of the reasons we had to do this is that our clients are moving in that direction. We will be living a bubble if we don’t do the same because we are already providing some kind of quality services to them in this market, we can transport some of these services to other part of Africa. I really don’t see xenophobia as a big challenge. Every country is dealing with internal problems. I am sure the South Africa governments are on top of these issues. We are comfortable doing business in South Africa or anywhere else. We just need to push the Africa agenda more, if we want this continent to be better for all, we need to cross fertilize ideas to take our businesses to the next level and develop each other.

There are certain best practices already available in Nigeria within the marketing communications, which we know will be useful in South Africa. The vision is to leave an indelible print across this continent. So, we are taking it region by region, this is just the starting point.

One of the reasons we had to do this is that our clients are moving in that direction. We will be living a bubble if we don’t do the same…

It would change everything. I can’t speak for government of South Africa but I can speak for Nigeria because that is the passport I carry. For whatever reason this agreement not signing, I think we can renegotiate some of these arguments that are worrisome and again give credit to people in government because we have a lot of professional there who can see if it favours us or not.

I think this continent has a lot to gain if we sign that agreement, unless we are able to do it, we are not going to move forward as a people. Forget all the injustice they’ve done to us in the past, this is new generation, we need to build this continent and take it to the next level

Business is a lot more competitive in South Africa, how is your X3M Ideas SA (PTY) going to handle this?

Right now, we are major player on the continent. Like recently, we were in morocco for the Cristal Award, we met a number of these global players. Some asked me “Steve, what global agency are you affiliated with?” I told them, “We are independent agency”. We are one of few or only independent agencies that won the awards like these, we won 12 medals at the event. Major Player in South Africa came to the award, not all of them won at this level! So we are already competitive. We are not going there as poor cousin, we are going out there as a company that has done something substantial in Nigeria space and to impact the African region.

To start your agency five years ago and be ranking the way we are ranking in Nigeria is not a tea party. So we’ve already left our mark on this market, It’s time to advance.

As an entrepreneur, comparing the economy in Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda and other Africa countries, can you tell us the difference?

I can tell you, first and foremost, Nigeria is still a wonderful market, we have our challenges, we have our issues, we need to get government right, we need to get infrastructure right. I was in Accra the other day; see the airport so smaller than our own but very organized. So if we can get infrastructure right in Nigeria, the sky is the limit and we are going to build more entrepreneurs and take over this continent.

Having said that, some of the places we’ve been to, the infrastructure is really top class; in south Africa the infrastructure is really good. In some places maybe the infrastructure is not as good as Nigeria. So I think is a mix across.

Sometimes in the past you gleefully advocated for merger and acquisition in the industry, with your current move, do you still believe in this?

Definitely, we are not going alone into some of these markets, even though we have this South Central Africa project, we actually have people or companies we want to merge with or acquire. In Nigeria, it’s inevitable if you don’t merge in the next five years, you will mention some agencies and you will say “I used to know them”.

We have no choice than to merge, people need to get acquired because the old school ways of staying a “big fish in little bathtub” is gone. Nothing is wrong in smaller fish in a big pond and that is what merger and acquisition will do for you. It is inevitable if not, people will die, companies will die and common sense will prevail eventually.

Five years down the line, how big is the X3M Ideas group?

We are still not big; we are still operating on the mentality of a start up. Even Amazon, I am sure Amazon still operates as a start up. The size is just a matter of mind.

We started with nothing and we are still much work in progress and there is so much work to do. We started with 7 people and today we have more than 100 people across the group. We are very much work in progress.

What are the irresistible opportunities in the South Africa Market, is Nigeria really advancing creative wise?

If you go out there you will see opportunities abound. We are not afraid to start small. In all of the markets we have been, we start small at the beginning. South Africa market is ahead in terms of budget and again you should know that South Africa market is already saturated especially at the level of the multinational players but there are still opportunities.

Before now, Nigeria hardly get a mention at some of these continental award shows, but these days Nigeria is like next emerging power house to watch.

I was a jury on the African Cristal awards. At the Loeries Award last year, the story is the same. Nigeria is becoming the next country to watch. How can other people be giving us credit and we are thinking we are dropping, I think on the other hand we are up and growing.

We started with nothing and we are still much work in progress and there is so much work to do. We started with 7 people and today we have more than 100 people across the group. We are very much work in progress.

This is a mission to consolidate Africa Advertising businesses on continental level, how easy is this likely to be?

It is clear, it takes you to have that courage though it’s not easy to achieve, it costs money and time but now we are probably one of the few agencies that did not raise money from anywhere, we generate our money and propagated the gospel of selling black excellence across the market. Someday we will consolidate the market for the whole world to see.

The obsession is to sell black excellence across the continent especially in the field of advertising. It gives us the opportunity to interact with other brands both local and global at whatever level and still be able to take those best practices and apply. We need each other on this continent. What I believe is nobody, will help us solve our problems in this continent, as black people we can solve this problem ourselves if we put our minds to it.

So what are the unique things X3M Ideas SA PTY will be bringing to the market?

Our record as X3M ideas is there for the world to see. We brought a bit of freshness to this industry. One of the landmark achievements we made is most agencies lived for 20 years but they can’t even count the brands they touched positively, I can count how many brands we touched positively, the relationship we build with clients are much more important than the financial aspect. As a person I am passionate about what I do, I’m not drive by money. I want to take a brand from here to there where they can be able to compete with others.

Advertising budget is on the decrease and clients too want more with his meager budget , how do you navigate this fragile terrain, what are you going to do differently now?

We are going to be more prudent now, we’ve always been prudent with our resource and once you are prudent with your resources, we can deploy some of the resources to vital areas of operations. People are very important, how much do you take care of your people. In five years, we have track records of taking care of our people. Doing all the training required of them to grow and putting back the money in to the business. We complain that government did not do this, every small company that you have you are a government, what did do with your company? It starts from home. Laying structure on the ground and putting back the money in the business where the people who generate the money will benefit.